The present invention relates to a new and distinct cultivar of speedwell plant grown as an ornamental plant for use in border, rock garden, and as a groundcover for the landscape. The new variety is known botanically as Veronica×hybrida and will be referred to hereinafter by the cultivar name ‘Blue Yonder’.
‘Blue Yonder’ is a hybrid plant of unknown species which in part botanically resembles plants of the species Veronica allionii and Veronica liwanensis (the latter commonly known as Turkish Speedwell). The inventor is not able to definitively attribute ‘Blue Yonder’ to either these two or any other species. Commencing in spring 2010, the inventor assembled many self-sown hybrid Veronica seedlings at the inventor's nursery in Fort Collins, Colo. The inventor discovered ‘Blue Yonder’ in the inventor's trial and display gardens at the inventor's nursery as a chance seedling amongst the self-sown seedlings.
The inventor was attracted to the rich intense blue flowers of ‘Blue Yonder’ which set it apart from all other seedlings on the nursery. In addition, plants of ‘Blue Yonder’ bear rich dark green foliage on creeping and self-rooting dark stems. The overall effect of ‘Blue Yonder’ in containers and in the landscape is of a dense mat of foliage covered in spring and early summer with many densely packed racemes consisting of numerous (up to 80) blue-violet single flowers. The flowers are the more conspicuous by virtue of a near-white corolla tube eye and dark stamens with near-white anthers.
‘Blue Yonder’ was first asexually propagated by the inventor in Fort Collins, Colo. in 2010 using the method of stem cuttings rooted in perlite under intermittent mist. The inventor has carried out multiple asexual reproductions and has established that ‘Blue Yonder’ is uniform and stable and reproduces true to type from its cuttings.